{"id":154,"date":"2015-02-10T17:10:37","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T17:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arlduc.org\/senseandscale\/?p=154"},"modified":"2015-02-19T22:51:42","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T22:51:42","slug":"nyu-session-2-data-journalism-and-sensors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arlduc.org\/senseandscale\/?p=154","title":{"rendered":"NYU Session 2: Data Journalism and Sensors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The range of student backgrounds and voices continues to engage, excite, and make for lively discussion and experimentation. As Anthony Vanky said during the MIT workshop, I take a “mile-wide, inch deep” approach to structuring graduate workshops, with the aim of giving students a fat set of tools for going a mile deep on their own projects.<\/p>\n

Some students are starting to form ideas for larger projects, which include (in no particular order): a chair timer (Graham), a modular\/mobile\/personal thermostat system (Justin), an exploration of NYC noise complaints (Changyeon), water and waste tracking stations (Greg), a bus tracker\u00a0(Varun\/Graham), and smart archeology and historic preservation<\/a> (Will). Some projects will be more on the “quantified self” end of the spectrum, others will tackle the “smart city,” and some are somewhere in between. Some projects might take a meta-approach<\/a>, as with our journalism student Claudia. Individual, environmental, or both? This semester, I expect\u00a0all students to explain\u00a0where their projects lie on this\u00a0spatiotemporal\u00a0spectrum, and I aim to give them tools to contextualize their work on this spectrum.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I’m learning new tools for and from the class. I appreciated Varun’s discussion of SCOT v TD<\/a> in his approach to technology, as well as Kania’s reaction to the “more engaging, more intimate, and more focused<\/a>” nature of our class setting. I continue to believe that our work comes first, and we are all here to learn from each other, myself included.<\/p>\n

Our speaker this week, ProPublica’s NewsApps developer Al Shaw<\/a>, gave a powerful\u00a0guest lecture on data journalism’s unique ability\u00a0to support text-based journalism, and how ProPublica’s NewsApps can extend data journalism beyond the dynamic range of the standard data visualization. He also explained his major 2014 project, a remote-sensing-based approach to\u00a0Louisiana’s eroding wetlands\u00a0and the changing nature (and location) of the Mississippi River Delta. For the resulting visualizations, imagery was obtained from the government, private companies, and also by ProPublica using citizen-science tools (hacked IR cameras mounted on balloons and kites) designed by Public Laboratory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not only was it fascinating\u00a0to see what Al had been up to since early 2014, when I helped teach a remote sensing workshop where Al was a student, but I think Al’s lecture helped set up a macro\/micro approach that I aim to continue throughout the semester: a guest lectures to help us look at the macro-picture and major questions around ourselves and our environments, followed by hands-on activities to get us familiar with the micro-challenges of developing\u00a0new technologies.<\/p>\n

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TODAY’S AGENDA<\/strong><\/p>\n